United Nations Foundation

United Nations Foundation, also called UN Foundation, public charity created in 1998 to assist the United Nations (UN) and its humanitarian efforts through advocacy, partnerships, community building, and fund-raising. It strives to connect people, ideas, and resources (from governments, businesses, and international philanthropic organizations) and to facilitate collaboration on large-scale global issues. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and maintains an office in New York City.

The UN Foundation was created in response to a pledge by the American entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner (this author) in 1997 of $1 billion to assist UN programs and activities. Because the UN is unable to accept private donations, the UN Foundation was established to receive the pledge; in turn, the UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) was created within the UN to coordinate activities between itself and the UN Foundation. The latter was established as a public charity with a governing board, not as a private foundation, and the greater transparency of its governance and operations has helped to ensure a measure of independence for the institution. Board members have included internationally renowned leaders such as Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the UN; Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and former director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO); and Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the UN.

The UN Foundation works closely with the UN secretary-general, though it does not receive any UN funding. It focuses its activities in six main areas: children’s health, energy and climate change, women and population, technology, sustainable development, and advocacy on behalf of the UN. Each area is managed by a foundation expert, who solicits partners and support internationally, coordinates resources, and promotes new and existing global initiatives aimed at assisting UN causes.

Children’s health

The objective of the UN Foundation in this area is to help the UN reduce childhood mortality, strengthen public health systems (especially in the developing world), and eliminate or prevent infectious diseases. The foundation has been an active participant in partnerships with the American Red Cross, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund), and the World Health Organization (WHO) to eliminate polio worldwide (the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, launched in 1988) and to reduce childhood deaths from measles (the Measles Initiative, launched in 2001). In the first decade of its existence, the Measles Initiative helped to immunize some 700 million children against the disease. The foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign has distributed throughout Africa millions of Long-Lasting Insecticide Treated Nets (LLITNs), which are arguably the most cost-effective method of preventing malaria. The foundation also works to raise awareness of the importance of childhood immunizations.

Energy and climate change

The UN Foundation works with national governments, the UN, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and private-sector institutions to develop and implement clean, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels—such as solar energy, wind power, and biofuels. In addition, the foundation provides financial and strategic support to the Energy Future Coalition, an initiative that unites businesses, labour organizations, and environmental groups in a search for broad-based nonpartisan strategies to address climate change. The foundation also leads the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative that supports the large-scale adoption of clean and safe household cooking technology as a way to prevent premature deaths from exposure to smoke, increase standards of living, empower women, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The foundation is a key supporter of programs promoting greater energy efficiency, which it sees as the cheapest, fastest, and smartest way to save energy resources and to decrease greenhouse-gas pollution.

Women and population

The UN Foundation strives to make education and reproductive health care accessible to all women by 2015. Adolescent girls are a special focus of the foundation, which works with the UN and NGOs to protect them from violence and HIV/AIDS and to discourage child marriage and early pregnancy. The foundation’s Girl Up campaign gives American girls the opportunity to support UN programs that assist adolescent girls in some of the remotest regions of the world. The foundation highlights the problem of obstetric fistula, a debilitating childbirth injury nearly eliminated in the West in the early 20th century but still prevalent in the developing world.

Technology

In partnership with the Vodafone Foundation and NGOs such as Télécoms Sans Frontières (“Telecoms Without Borders”), the UN Foundation helps to provide emergency communications networks and mobile and satellite technology for UN disaster-relief missions. The foundation was also a founding member in 2009 of the mHealth (mobile health) Alliance, which funds and helps to train mobile-health workers in countries of sub-Saharan Africa, providing them with technology for capturing vital health data.

Sustainable development

The UN Foundation promotes sustainable tourism and economic development in communities near World Heritage sites. It was one of the initiating members of the Partnership for Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, which in 2008 created a set of universal voluntary standards for sustainable-tourism practices.

UN advocacy

In partnership with the Better World Campaign, the UN Foundation advocates for a strong, fully-funded UN system. The foundation has led numerous campaigns—such as “Don’t Shut Down the UN,” “Price of Peace,” “Don’t Go It Alone,” and “On Day One”—designed to build public support for the UN and its role in solving global and international problems such as climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and assaults on human rights. In 2010 the foundation announced a strategic alliance with the UN Association of the USA (UNA-USA). The alliance combined more than 100 UNA-USA chapters with the UN Foundation’s various advocacy initiatives to form the largest network of American supporters of the UN.

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